Lophi - Guides/Strategy/Discussion

Now lets get into Lophi. Lophi is an agile mage/trickster with a lot of cool combos and debuffs. Her combos options and skills can wreck enemies and she rewards a tactical minded player.

Notable Skills - (This won't cover every skill, just what I have tested thus far, can and will update as I try more of her arsenal)

** Note about Summoner Tree **
Presently I am not impressed with the Summoner tree. Most of the spells have long cast times, mediocre effects, and low damage. If the spells were faster they may become more useful but in their present state I have a hard time endorsing any skill from that tree. Something Heavy might be strong but the skills along the way down to it don't strengthen you enough.

ShadowStep - This skill is great for entering or exiting combat, reasonably safe, good damage. I haven't fully grasped how it works but somehow you can make it go further or shorter, but it tends to do the opposite for me from what I want. Still, solid skill. You can generally keep your combo with this skill too with practice.

ShadowShift - Makes a dark pool where your attacks hit way harder, gives you this cool shadow faced graphic, and causes a mild hitstun upon casting. I have a hard time utilizing this spell most of the time, but it is a good damage increase. Play around with it, its not bad, just sometimes hard to pin enemies. Good on bosses.

Consume - This spell takes some finesse but can be quite useful. Trick is you need a few enemies at once to get value out of it, as it can pay for itself or even refund energy if you hit enough targets. Good for whittling down tougher enemies. Easy combo starter as well, though it can put enemies into counter attacks so be careful. Cast time is a bit long so don't do it point blank.

Pyrotechnics - This spell got phased out of my build but its solid. You drop a bomb which can knockback very close enemies, then after roughly 3 seconds it detonates launching enemies into the air and puts a DoT on them. Damage is so-so, I think it could use a boost since there is such a delay. It has its uses.

FrozenFrame - I want to really like this spell, I try to use it often but its cast time and range almost always get me wailed on. Its a cool levitate slow spell that can get you out of a jam but I wish it came out a little faster.

Shatter - Now this is an awesome spell. The animation, the pay off, getting a good set up and blowing up a group of mobs always feels good when you cast this. Currently be careful/aware that aoe spells have a bug right now that sometimes they don't cause hitstun or damage, which is a real bummer but I trust the developers to get that sorted out. Get this spell on your bar as soon as you can. Fun fact - this spell does even more damage the more debuffs an enemy has on them!

Traits -

HeavyHanded - 10% damage increase on basic attacks. Lophi does solid damage with her combos so don't underestimate this trait.

HoarfrostStrike - 10% chance to slow enemies on your basic attacks. This counts as a debuff for purposes of Shatter. Very handy for Lophi's hit and run playstyle.

ErodingStrikes - 40% chance to lower armor of the target, and stacks. I'm not sure armor shred is a debuff for Shatter purposes. (Would be cool to get clarification on that ) But this alone adds a large deal of damage to your combos. Very strong trait.

Moxie - Unlike Aurok this trait says 25 and only gives 25. If anything I think Lophi should have the higher one if one is to be higher. Likely a bug on Aurok's part.

Scrappy / Resolve - These both add to your survivability. Scrappy seems better once you get some ok armor but both get the job done.

Currently heavy shadow is the way I go with Lophi. Jetting in and out of combat, softening targets, then dashing in for an epic Shatter is really rewarding. Shadow offers strong combo damage potential. I find this build and Lophi in general very rewarding to play.

Notable Combos -

D>D>D>S - Forgot the proper name to this combo, but for reference Lophi will revolve her sphere around her then loose it in front of her allowing it to snake forward and back. This combo hits over 10x and if you catch a group of enemies you can easily rack up large combos quickly. Only drawback is that you can't cancel/dash from this so be care. This is one of Lophi's strongest tools, but be careful. D>D>D>D is a terrible combo and will drop your existing combo so be sure not to mash, it gets some getting used to the timing but it works wonders.

Space>Space - Not a combo but something to get used to using, Lophi has an Air-Dash! This gets you out of major jams and even goes farther after sprinting.

These are what I have so far, i'll add more as I get to play her more. Hope you find this helpful. If you disagree with my Summoner assessment let me know, I would love to know other players strats and habits. I'll even add it to the guide! (You will get credited obviously) Enjoy the game!

Although I have spent this week working on Aurok, Lophi is what drew me to this game. I cannot wait to unleash her update kit in the next wave, and I am glad I was able to contribute into making her more awesome. She really is a blast to play, and her design is really unique. Eager to see more Eidelon designs.

The summoner tree is kind of handy if you like spamming your skills like a combination of "Something Speedy" and "Something Wicked" just imagine how many of those eidolons would spawn if all the "Something Speedy" hits

The problem with eidolons is that they are very slow... and if you don't cast constantly they don't spam. But I like summoner, though. What I hate is how weak Shadow is... they need to add something extra to do more damage. With Summoner sometimes my Autoattacks hit 1500. And with shadow using shatter I did 700... so ... summoner is better now.

The majority of shadow traits for me... are very bad... why does a full magic damage champ needs things like Sentry... or Resolve... For me the only valuable trait in shadow is Focus but is it requires to have Sentry..... which is pretty bad.

Lophi is a ranged caster. She can Buff herself and debuff enemies, resulting in a challenging style with great combo potential.
You can play her as a full caster or as an auto attacker, or a hybrid of this.

Moxie:
Increases maximum energy.
Nice but not really needed, there are pleny ways of restoring energy.

Scrappy:
Increases maximum armor.
Lophi is very squishy, so i feel this one is needed. (im not so good at blocking )

Something Speedy:
Ranged magic attack, air damage, press the button muiltiple times to cast more.
Does some very nice damage at lvl 5, requires you to stand still which is not always a good thing.
Cast time feels a little bit to long.

Something Devious:
Solid passive, give a 50% chance to restore 3 energy on top of the base regen of each auto attack.
if you like to spam skills this is a must have.

Something scary:
Defense reduction on enemies, its nice but there are better abilities.

Residual Energy:
another solid passive, increases damage after using a skill, a whopping 20% at lvl 5.

Something Small:
Shrink your enemies, reducing their defense, attack and size.
Great skill, great combo with Something Big.
makes it pretty hard to see what the enemies are doing, uninteruptable casts are hard to see.

Something Wicked:
Chance to summon an agressive Eidolon, explodes after a certain amount of time, or explodes on impact.
Very decent skill, good proc rate 33% at lvl 5, good damage, doesnt add to combo counter from what ive seen.

Something Heavy:
Drops something heavy on enemies.
Havent tried this skill yet, seems decent. Looks like this is the hardest hitting skill in Lophi's arsenal.
Will try this out later.

Shadow tree:

Shadow Shift:
Another great self buff, greatly boosing your offensive power. comes in the form of a pool of shadow power, stand in it to get the buff.

Shadow step:
Move across a distance unleashing a devastating uppercut, throwing enemies in the air.
This is by far my favorite spell on Lophi, great to keep combos going or escape nasty situations and it does good damage.

Heavy Hand:
Nice boost to your auto attacks, 10% extra damage at lvl 5.
I feel this is a must have, debatable probably this or Hoarfrost Strike.

Frozen Frame:
Slows enemies caught in the cast radius of this spell.
Good solid spell, radius is large, just think there are better spells to play with.

Sentry:
chance to increase defense after blocking. 65% at lvl 5.
If you can block why do you need extra defense? definately needs looking at, and changing.

Consume:
Shoot a Shadow lance through all enemies, to get energy back and deal some nice AoE damage.
Hit enough enemies and this is a free cast or you actually gain energy back, cast time seems a little long.
Great spell for proccing Eidolons from the passives in Summoner tree.

Pyrotechnics:
Drops a bomb, needs 5 points in Sentry, unlocks Focus when you put 5 points in it.
Damage should be higher(950 at lvl 5) to justify the 5 wasted points in Sentry, also needs looking at.

Hoarfrost Strike:
10% chance of slowing enemies on hit.
Great passive, 10% slow seems a little low, need to invest 10 points to get there. Would be better if it was
15%-20% chance to slow. When the slow procs its a great slow.

Focus:
25% extra damage on abilities at lvl 5, THIS IS MASSIVE!!!
Probably the best passive skill to have if you want to play Lophi as a caster, to bad you need to waste 10 points
in useless skills to get there.
15 points to get the max out of this isnt worth it.

Resolve:
Health is increased by 100% of your intellect.
while on paper this looks great. at lvl 23 i have only 106 intellect on Lophi, 100 health isnt that much.
not so great a passive, but needed to unlock Shatter.

Shatter:
Great damage dealing ability, that deal more damage to enemies with negative status effects on them (think slows,
reduced armor etc.)
Does slightly less base damage then Somehting Heavy, but the bonus effect is just plain awesome. Great stuff.
too bad you need to invest in Resolve to get here.

Eroding Strikes:
Chance to reduce enemy armor with standard attacks.
If you play Lophi like i do, boosting her standard attacks, this is a must have.
Tooltip says it stacks, doesnt say how much reduction, so useless info.

By just looking at the skill trees you can see there is a ton of combo potential.
Frozen Frame in to Something Heavy or Shatter combined with Consume to restore your energy.
If you dont want to be a caster but want to boost your Standard attacks you can do that also.
Or if you wanna have fun with massive Eidolon procs and protect yourself with those and blow your enemies up,
you can!

Tournament play:

For tournament play you want to maximize your combo potential.
So i would suggest, Shadow step at the base you can keep combos going for a long time, and the knock up follow
by the double air attacks Lophi can do, if you get 3 or more enemies in the Shadow step that's instant Savage Combo.

I like Lophi's Standard attacks, thats why i play with my current build, to boost her attacks so i can use the
energy for buffing myself and keeping combo's going.

I will use the remaining points on Residual Energy when i get to max level, and probably replace Scrappy on the traits.

My thoughts on Lophi:

While having great potential i feel some of her skills in both trees are fillers to get to the good stuff, many of her skills seem mediocre at best.
It will take some playtesting to find out the best skill set for you. And different challenges will require different builds.
While its pretty cheap to respecc, this does take away some of the fun, i'd like to see certain abilities changed or buffed, so build diversity
is possible.

For now i can see 2-3 build be competitve in the tournament ladders, where 1 will certainly be better. I'm not the best player out there,
but i think in the right hands the build i just posted is definately top 3 potential.

I'm open for discussion on this matter ofcourse and would like to see some of the top ranked players share their builds to get this discussion started,
also i would like others to review this build and maybe even test it out to see if i'm right or not.

sentry is incredibly powerful. sure you can block, but thats only for base attacks. unblockable attacks usually come out of nowhere, and thats where the def up from sentry shines: it really reduces the damage you take to incredibly low amounts. ive seen 500+ damage cut to nearly 70-80 when sentry is active... and that was an unblockable champion attack!

focus may take a lot of points to get and maxed out, but trust me, with the amount of spellcasting lophi does, this really pumps out the damage like nobodys buisness. ive crippled heimdal with nothing but this and pyrotechnics.

consume usually eats more energy than it gains and the damage is minimal, but hits quite a lot of times so if youre going for combo points, then this sucker is your calling card.

shadow shift not only boosts your damage but your defense as well. you dont need to be permanently in the pool for the effect to stick: just run in the pool and out again. as long as lophis face is covered in shadows, the effect is active.

edit:

i forgot to mention about pyrotechnics and shatter.these 2 are incredibly buggy.

pyrotechnics is usually a 4 step attack: drop the bomb that does full damage, does burn, explodes for full damage again, then burns yet again. recently, the bomb skips the first two steps (drop damage and burn damage) even at point blank range, where it always happens.

shatter itself suffers from this as well, but since shatter only does 1 hit and nothing else, it usually ends up being a waste of energy. ive casted shatter point blank and have it do absolutely NOTHING.

Arciel do you have AVG running? I had many of the same issues that you are describing which aren't 100% the games fault, it turned out for me if I disabled AVG I got an amazing improvement in my hit detection and game speed. Not saying its not CBs fault but I shared similar problems but seemed to fix them once I got my rig running properly.

i dont really have a problem with frame rate. the pyrotechnics and shatter bug seems to happen out of complete random although i should point out that it started happening just after the dungeon revamp.

nothing really seems underpowered, probably because i understand that lophi is more on speed and technique rather than power and endurance like aurok.

i agree she is more about speed, but some of her spells feel a little to slow for that.
cast times are to long, she is very squishy compared to aurok, so if you get hit, it hurts a lot, having long cast times doesnt help with that.

from what i have heard there are some problems with aoe hit detection, so probably just need to wait for the pyro shatter fixes.

i usually cast my spells after i block and activate sentry, for the added benefit of taking less damage if the situation is unavoidable. most of the time however i sprint away and back to confuse the AI so i can cast spells safely.